Stevie Nicks and Don Henley

Rhiannon, chanteuse, Gold Dust Woman. He gave you a peaceful, easy feeling. You danced with him a dance of song, a song of singers and lovers, who sang of lovers and friends. You bared your soul to him and us, and we wouldn’t give it back.

Give to me your leather
Take from me my lace
A hit for the ages.

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This poetic form is called a haibun. It is a prose poem followed by a haiku, that comes in at the end “like a whisper”, according to my friend and poet Katy Gero who told me about it. I have always loved the Nicks/Henley duet Leather And Lace and recently started reading more about it. In the line notes, Stevie Nicks writes about how in writing this song she strove to convey the difficulty of writing a song about love between her and another musician (Henley), who is also in the industry and the public eye. She talked about how you write your heart into the song and want it to be your own but because of the public nature of your life, you can never control people making it theirs. She also talked about how Don Henley helped her persevere and write it through. Without his encouragement she would have given up at many turns along the way. They remained close (“lovers and friends”) after they broke up, as Nicks was wont to do with musicians she once dated. “Rhiannon” and “Gold Dust Woman” are songs Nicks wrote and personas she adopts on stage. Chanteuse is a French-derived word for female singer. I read her being referred to as a “chanteuse” in an article once and it kind of stuck in my mind. Peaceful Easy Feeling is an Eagles (Don Henley is a member of the Eagles) song. “Who sang of…” is a trope taken from the poem A River by A. K. Ramanujan which I read over a decade ago in school. “Give to me your leather… take from me my lace” are lyrics from Leather And Lace.